Storm Clouds on the Horizon

by Talguy21

2. Not-so-deep Space

Blue pulled himself from beneath the Dark Matter reactor, his face streaked with oil stains. He brought up a display with a flick of his wing, and with a couple wing strokes, the reactor whirred to life.

“Finally. Feels like it’s been days!” Blue exclaimed.

It’s been four hours and twenty-five minutes, Blue. You’re getting sloppy.

“Hey, this isn’t one of those fairy tales where I can just blast the broken reactor with a friendship laser and be done with it.” Blue shook his head. “Now that we’ve got primary power, how about be see to getting to that star system?” As he says that, red lights and an alarm flare to life around him. “I thought I told you to cut the damage alerts!”

We have a planet-sized object approaching fast- it’s practically on top of us!

“Why didn’t you mention this sooner?”

I was blind.

“SHADOW, see if you can’t use the directional thrusters to get a landing solution that doesn’t end with us as space dust.”

Last time I took control of a moving spaceship, I got a speeding ticket from the space cops.

“Just do it!” Blue shouted, before breaking into a gallop towards the hyperlift. “I’ll get up there as soon as I can!”

Just so you know- If I die, it’s your fault.

“Noted.” Blue clammered into the hyperlift, doors sliding shut behind him. As the lift hissed through the ship, Blue fluttered his wings anxiously. They couldn’t find purchase on the air or anything, but it felt like it was the one thing that would keep him up here, instead of a smear on some space rock. The lift doors slid open, and Blue began his mad dash across the lion’s share of the ship left between him and the bridge.

---

Sweet Celestia, mother of Equus, have mercy on us, for we have cookies and you’re nice and-- Blue sped through the bridge doors.

“Shut up and give me the situation!” he yelled, before looking out the viewscreen. The sight that greeted him was a black disk, blotting out starlight behind it. It covered nearly the entire field of view of the screen, and was growing larger by the second.

Planetoid measures 1.3x the mass of Equus, minimal atmosphere, and seems to be made mostly of some kind of silliconic compound. Oh, and it’s going to hit us. Soon.

“How soon?”

Very. Five minutes or less, depending on what you want to do.

“Vector in a landing point, preferably somewhere flat.”

The surface is really jagged and uneven… There! A canyon in the Southern Hemisphere. Should be flat enough for a safe landing.

“Should?”

We have more of a chance than anywhere else, featherbrain.

“Understood.” Grasping the control sticks, Blue’s eyes narrowed. “Angle us for an approach. I’ll take care of the final touches.” A green light flashed on the console in an affirmative, and the cockpit screen lit with the flames of re-entry. Screaming metal and flashing lights greeted Blue when he entered atmosphere. The Storm Cloud was never meant to land on a planet, after all. Ahead, in the darkness, the light from the relatively nearby sun showed Blue his first glimpse of the planet. Great crystalline spires of dark crystal rose high above the surroundings, and the ground beneath them was broken, shattered, even. Blue couldn’t take long to admire the scenery though, because just ahead laid a narrow strip of relatively flat ground. There was only one problem.

“Uhh, SHADOW?” Blue stammered. “That is really narrow!”

Well, what do we do? Blue pondered for a moment.

“Charge the mining laser. Fire at formations that have the highest probability of collision.” With as much finesse as he could muster, Blue lowered the goliath jumpship into the canyon. The ship rocked and creaked as it crashed through crystalline spires. As the ship continued to descend, bright spears of light shot from the ship, carving white-hot holes in the walls of the canyon. Moments later, the ship slammed into the ground, shuddering and shrieking as metal met rock, and after a tense minute of sliding, the Storm Cloud finally came to a halt. Blue let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and his tense body relaxed, his wings falling at his sides.

“Good job, SHADOW. We did it.”

Oh. We did. There was a moment of silence. All my planning was for a scenario where we were both dead.

Blue facehoofed.

“Glad to know you were confident.”

I was plenty confident… that we were going to die. ...in my defense.

“Sure you were.” Blue leaned back in his chair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am exhausted, and I’m going to take a nap. Wake me when the aliens attack.”

Sensors don’t detect any--

“Then don’t wake me! Jeez…” With that, Blue Lightning took a nap in his pilot’s chair.